Comprehensive Piece Guide From a Player Rated Over 3000 Hello everyone! Welcome to my guide to all pieces in existence and serves as advice for how to use each piece and which tiers to use and some general strategy. All pieces are discussed for at least 100 words. I do not claim that my opinions are objectively correct however I will stand by most but not all claims in this guide. This guide is primarily for people new to the game or lower ranks but there might be some things someone outside of those ranks could do with this guide (burn it to the ground I guess). Anyway, that’s probably not the right way to begin the introduction to this guide and if I learned anything from drak’s guide it’s that guides like these will be questioned so that will be fun. Use control-f to get to specific pieces in this guide. Also, all pieces are in alphabetical order so you can find them that way if control-f gets messed up by me talking about other pieces elsewhere. Rating scale: 0(awful should never be used) 1(has some niche uses) 2( is powerful in its niche but garbage outside of it or just slightly underpowered 3(average) 4(good) 5(powerful) 6( very good in all situations) 7(must use) no pieces are currently a 7 so IDK why I have it. AirElemental Rating: 3/3/2/2 This piece falls into the category of short rook. Base has 3 range for the cost of 8 which is standard. I would not recommend using this piece unless you have a specific use for the wind (like a rush deck using it to push allied units). Also using ++ or +++ is fairly iffy as you can only use wind once at ++ to get a meaningful value increase and the sylph is absolutely useless. The piece at base also compares very poorly with base crusader- I do not think wind is more valuable than the shield. Some people might say wait but base can promote, this is a beginner trap as you are spending 1 to increase the value of the piece by 2 and get an extra range. This is bad because when you inevitably trade it away you will have lost a ton of extra morale. Alchemist Rating: 4/3/2/5 This piece can be very good and +++ is seen in a bunch of GM armies. However, using any tier but base and +++ is fairly bad in opinion. + just gives you extra cure squares which in 95% matches are going to be garbage and you’re gonna be throwing a point away, even in the 5% of matches they matter in only about half of those will it make a meaningful difference as if it nuances your opponent’s army enough they’ll just down trade for it giving you maybe a 5 morale but more likely 2 morale advantage. ++ is just kind of silly because at this point you can get knight attacks for only 5 more which makes the piece a threat instead of a piece to trade for a couple of free minions and a cheap champ. Angel Rating 5/3/3/5 This piece at base is pretty decent being only one of two pieces able to attack at extended knight range allowing it to fork and get some free pieces. This piece is really good at forcing tempo moves from your opponent by being able to threaten the king from outside the range of most other pieces. I would hesitate to use anything beyond base though unless you have +++. + is pretty garbage 2 extra cost for a diagonal move is just not worth it. ++ is also not worth due to its poor comparison with +++. +++ gets range 2 diagonal move/attack which does wonders for its speed and becomes extremely good at getting free pieces by forking king. One final thing about this piece is its passive. Enchanting minions for a turn is decent with samurai but the beginner trap that even GMs fall into (see Betel) is sacking it on a minion for the enchant is just not worth it for 15 cost do not do it. It's one of the easiest ways to lose only slightly harder to than running 3 greed+++ keep that in mind in case grand decides to add an anti chess mode. Antimage Rating 2/2/2/3 This piece is really bad at all tiers except +++ where its slightly below average. This piece is bad at base as a warrior unable to move diagonally. Then it at + is a warrior without range 2 move. At ++ its pretty bad compared to any other piece you could have at the price point but is better than +. At +++ its actually decent as it becomes a ninja++ without the unblockable move and attack for 3 less. The only problem with its gimmick is that even armies that use a lot of magic still use other pieces that can take it which makes it a priority for trading. I would avoid using it in all armies except ones that get completely nuanced by magic but even in those its kinda questionable. Apprentice Rating: 1/0/3/4 Base apprentice serves only one purpose- being a sacrificial swapper answer to the thundermage lifestone nuance but so many other things do it so much better so it's garbage. + is just a crap swapper for 2 cost. I’ve never seen base nor + used in any remotely serious army. ++ is the first semi decent tier and becomes a mini champ but unless you have a specific use for the swaps, in my opinion, drake+/skeleton+++ is better in most situations. +++ is like ++ but costs 4 more and can now actually fork enemy champs making it fairly dangerous and can be fairly good in trade armies. Aquarius Rating:3/4/3/3 Base aquarius is in my opinion very good at base for only 6 cost. Its special destroy ability is really good at base for defense as any piece trying to attack risks being frozen if it's a knight's move away from it. I feel that + is best as a sacrificial attacker. It can attack the enemy line then freeze everything opening it up so you can recapture safely and come out ahead. But now that its ability has a valk range it can start to make threats, with sufficient backup to freeze the enemy king. ++ and +++ are good for their on death effect that I talked about earlier but now the destroy self ability gets rather expensive so I would avoid using it unless a check mate is guaranteed. Arachnid Rating:2/1/1/4 I kinda feel that base and +++ are the only tiers worth using. Base is okay but it completes with moon fox for as a short bishop and I feel like it would be kinda silly to take this over moon fox which gets a second life for only 50% more expensive or medusa base for one more. Range 1 poison just isn’t that useful. + and ++ are just garbage ++ is a bishop with range 1 poison I feel losing color-boundness and using bishop+ would just be better in almost all circumstances I guess ++ could be used in some rush decks but it really isn’t worth it 99% of the time. +++ is pretty decent. It can attack with poison 2 squares away allowing it to pick off minions and give unblockable threats which is incredibly good. Archbishop Rating 1/2/2/1 This piece looks good but every time I try to use it I just get frustrated with how it can’t solo mate (unless your opponent's king is in a corner with no minions anywhere to be found) and how it inevitably gets stuck somewhere due to its infuriating blind spots. At ++ where it finally gets semi decent range it costs just as much as a queen and I feel, despite thinking queen is garbage, it would be better in 99.99% of situations. If you are struggling against this piece you probably have at least 1 of 3 common beginner problems. 1. You have way too many utility minions (portal, beacon, nexus, lifestone kinda,) not having minions makes it much harder to deal with it. 2. You have too many expensive champions with minions that don’t give them any support e.g. soulkeeper fireelemenal dragon++ with bad minions such as penguin shieldsmen ect. 3. You try to repeatedly move poisonmage or ranger in the hopes of getting free minions while your opponent develops their pieces and inevitably either forks your king or takes your ranger or poisonmage Archer Rating: 2/1/1/4 Archer is only really useful at base and +++. Base can kill some stuff and some people have had some success with a line of these but I really wouldn’t recommend using this unit unless you are just using one of it because the blind spot in front of it is just asking for soulkeeper to come and wreck your line as you only have one turn to prepare if you’re black vs a soulkeeper+++. Archer+++ is a quick promoter and is hard to block in the end game and promotes to a decently powerful 16 cost unit. But + and ++ are jus bad as their promotes aren’t nearly as good as +++ and take far long to reach the 8th rank due to not having the teleports +++ does. Axeman Rating 5/5/3/4 Axeman base and + sections are very powerful when placed near your king as they don’t need to move and give superb protection to the king axeman is an almost strictly better pawn for one more and is far better due to them being a sudo king attacker when 2 are next to each other and its capable of mutual defense for only one cost. + is good if you plan on actually advancing your axemen and can provide solid control over an area. ++ is just garbage. The extra mobility from the starting position is pretty bad and most often useless. +++ has range 2 sideways attack which allows for it to act kinda like a champion with its impressive coverage and locks down the board even more than base and + but its less cost effective so for that I have to drop it a point. Banshee Rating 2/1/1/2 This piece is just a poor man's ghast especially with the most recent patches removal of its full range teleport it's even less useful. At +++ you finally get a full range teleport with some fancy swaps but at that point why not use a rook for one more. 11 cost for a king attacker is not a good deal. This piece is only usable at base as a cheap swapper and at +++ backup I guess. Please don’t use this piece. Okay I have to write another 20 words in this section but I’m not feeling it. Moving on to the next to the next piece. Basilisk Rating: 3/2/2/4 This piece again suffers from garbage middle tiers. Hey look at + we get a movement backwards, yay. Or for 3 cost we could get something that can actually attack stuff in front of it like a samurai or salamander. This piece used to have an even worse comparison with salamander but salamander got nerfed or something and now they’re not the same price. I feel the only tier worth using is +++ as a quick promoter for its reasonably powerful promotion. This piece's petrify is fairly useless as it can be rendered useless or even used against you as a double threat if your opponent has an angel to outtempo you. I feel in most cases it's worth spending the extra point for a samurai for all tiers except +++. Bat Rating 1/1/3/5 This piece starts out weak as its infuriating to try and promote base on a board with more than 3 pieces on it. And +’s extra movements are rather useless as well. ++ can promote in 2 moves which is very solid but +++ is obviously the best tier of bat with one turn promotion and a promotion worth a net 20 value and 5 morale drain on each attack making surviving without a king in the endgame very possible and can lead to some extremely easy victories in the endgame if your opponent has a lot of 0 cost minions scatter around unprotected on the board. Beacon Rating 2/3/2/2 A piece that along with other developmental pieces is a newbie trap. Using more than one of these pieces is an excellent way to lose. This piece is in the middle of the pack for developmental pieces and is used in a top 15 deck to great success but its scarcely used in the top 50 as decks should avoid having any kind of developmental piece as they just throw away a minion slot and are usually worthless in the endgame. Like any immobile piece using a swapper is important if you want to avoid being zapped by thundermage. If you don’t have a swapper in the deck you might want to invest in ++ or +++ to give it some mobility. Behemoth Rating 3/2/5/4 This piece at base is pretty bad. While it can get right next minions in order to kill a champion it needs support so if your opponent takes it with their champion and it was next to a minion now you can’t recapture as their champ is now protected unless you have another behemoth. Of course base is good if you’re gonna run a ton of these but outside of that it's pretty bad. + is probably the worst tier as extra mobility doesn’t help this piece very much at all because you still have the same problem as you did at base- you can’t initiate a trade because most champs have diagonal attacks rendering its ability worthless. ++ is where this piece starts to get incredibly broken it can initiate trades and you can now do one of the most scum tactics in all of CEO behemoth minotaur combo. This combo involves using multiple minotaurs to defend behemoth and lock down the center of the board making it impossible for any champion or minion to take behemoth without their king being exposed. +++ is good but I feel it's just too expensive for what it does. Berserker Rating: 2/2/1/3 Ah the classic melee champ that's too general so nobody uses it. Its fairly bad due to the fact that competition at 8 is very competitive. Comparing base to the crusader you trade a movement range and the shield for diagonal attack only. I feel crusader is going to be better 99% of the time. What if you want something to defend yourself from the diagonals. Air Elemental base exists and will be better 99% of the time. You can get Earthelemental+ Chastity+ or Alchemist instead too. I feel the only semi decent tier is +++ but then again you can get harpy++ or Frostmage+++ or even Antimage+++ for one less. This piece is just too generic Bishop Rating: 4/4/3/2 Bishop is an incredibly strong piece at base. It can attack a full diagonal at base for only 10 points making it an essential piece for rush decks of any kind. This piece, however, gets worse as you upgrade it like all classic pieces due to grand’s insistence on not radically changing their movesets. + is the only decent upgrade as it makes the piece no longer color bound which is a huge improvement making it only semi useless as opposed to useless in the endgame. ++ is garbage due to the fact that those moves are the most pointless things on the planet and +++ is just confusing to why anyone would ever want those teleports. Bomber Rating 1/1/1/0 This piece would be decent and maybe even good if it wasn’t so nuanced by magic. Magic just completely destroys them which is one reason +++ is so bad. The only tiers worth using are base and ++ as ++ can get to the enemy line fairly quickly and base is just so cheap it doesn’t matter if it gets killed on its way there. +++ is laughably expensive. For 4 cost you could actually use a good minion. It's a pretty terrible piece. Don’t use it unless you have a very very good reason to use it in some wacky rush/stall deck. Butterfly Rating 0/3/1/3 This piece’s ability takes way too much tempo to use and is easily countered. I see masters do a silly opening of moving it 3 times to cast on the champion line. This is just rather silly as it takes me much less tempo to avoid it, not to mention that some games go a lot shorter than the 23 moves it takes to revive and casr. Base butterfly is useless as once it revives and doesn’t kill anything its useless. + is a threat after it revives with skeleton moves so you might have to move away from it but 99% of the time it's harmless. ++ is a joke the diagonal moves don’t do anything for it. +++ is okay just as a king attacker but the op piece of garbage that is rg++ is better in almost every way. Chastity Rating 5/3/4/3 At base it's incredibly good king attack is extremely underpriced and a 5 cost king attacker would already be pretty good but having full range attack on top of that is really strong. It passive doesn’t do much to lessen how extremely good of a defender this piece is. + is pretty good but in my opinion it's just too expensive and isn’t as cost effective as base is. ++ goes back to being incredibly good at defending with all those extra attacks in front of it for only +2 from +. At +++ the swaps don’t do much for it. If you want swaps just run paladin. Comet Rating 4/3/2/2 I feel this piece is best used to stop annoying undefended high value champs from terrorizing you at the start of the game. This piece synergizes very well with samurai as samurai take only one turn to take the piece giving your opponent less time to outtempo you. That being said this piece has some serious weaknesses if your opponent runs an angel or a ninja they may be just able to threaten your king until the freeze wears off. I also feel that higher tiers of comet are pretty bad as now you are paying much more to take a piece and makes it incredibly hard to trade as your opponent will usually take whatever you use to take the frozen piece so the higher cost makes it very hard to come out ahead in morale. Crusader Rating 5/3/2/2 At 8 this piece is incredibly strong. It can usually up trade due to its armor and can be revived with a lifestone making it the ultimate piece for any trade deck. However the higher tiers are just laughably bad. ++ gives diagonal moves and +1 attack range for 50% more. This is a terrible deal. Then at ++ you just get diagonal attacks for 5 more and at +++ you get extra shield range and attack range for 3 more. My problem with these upgrades is at + you could get a fencer+++ a very strong piece falling into a similar niche for the same cost. At ++ you could get a phalanx++ for just one more and it would be far more effective. At +++ you could get a freaking queen for 1 more (not that I recommend that) it's just bad. Demon Rating 2.5 all tiers I don’t really have any strong feelings about this piece. Base is a pretty solid 10 cost champ and +’s extra teleports are nice but might not be worth the extra 2 cost. Demon++ gets some cool knight attacks and is pretty decent. +++ gets some pretty tricky swaps that could be cool but it starts getting too expensive to see regular use. However Demon gets set back by the fact that its just too generalized. The knight moves hint at wanting a closed game but the short rook aspect goes against it. It just tries to do too many things at once. Dove Rating: 4/3/4/5 Base also known as free ghost with nuance is great in the place of a ghost for a corner bishop in a rush deck. + is difficult to and it’s unclear to why you would use this piece outside of a soulkeeper dove rush but even then it’s rather confusing. However ++ can promote in 2 moves which is great and even less if it's moved up at all which is pretty good. +++ is incredibly good for even non-rush decks as you can use its valk swap to develop a champion turn 1 and it's now stuck behind your minion line so it won’t get destroyed by the enemy minions. Also, doves promote angel, is best at base and +++ for reasons I explained earlier in this guide. Dragon Rating 4/3/2/2 This piece is a total beginner trap. People look at this piece and say hey look it can checkmate by itself it's really good and it is pretty good. However, it can’t checkmate until late game and if you have that great of a material advantage by then it doesn’t really matter what pieces you have you can usually checkmate as if your opponent isn’t an idiot and has at least one king mover they can prevent it. Therefore base is the best tier and anything above + is overkill. This piece has additional uses aside from checkmating king now that its price has been reduced to 15. It can corner pieces that nuance your army and down trade with them and is great in that aspect which is why I give it a much higher score than the other tiers. Drake Rating 1/2/2/1 This piece is like apprentice+++, it’s a champion in minion form. However unlike apprentice+++ its absolute garbage. Not being able to move diagonally until +++ is a huge problem and unlike most champion minions it can’t force a trade as it cannot fork them with its limited attack squares and difficulty moving. Base is pure garbage as moving only one space at a time for 4 points is a horrible deal. + is better now that it can move but it still has an absolutely horrible comparison with skeleton+++ as for one more point you can get status immunity and diagonal moves. ++ with it’s attack being unblockable can now kinda threaten multiple champs at once if someone was dumb enough to let that happen or you could just get a skeleton+++. At +++ it can finally move 2 spaces in a diagonal direction. But for 2 more you could have apprentice+++ which is what it wants to be. Dryad Rating 5/5/5/6 The classic morale farm piece and is a staple of anyone who actually wants to be competitive in the game as stall is the only viable build in the higher ranks and if you don’t have a dryad you’re screwed. Any square protected by it cannot be broken through even with an infinite number of non magical attackers. This piece is a necessity if you want to run a lich. It's not fun to use nor is it fun to play against it’s just a necessary part of every game. Thank you for coming to my TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) talk. Duelist Rating: 3/1/1/4 This piece is decent and has a solid end game promotion. However running a line of these is one of the stupidest things you can do in this game due to their pathetic amount of coverage. Also running any tier except base or +++ is bad because these upgrades don’t really give you anything worthwhile and just cost more points. +++ allows 2 duelists to defend each other and gives a much more powerful promotion and has much better coverage. Running a full line of these is still not recommended but Stalwart a top 10 player runs a few of them to great effect. EarthElemental Rating: 5/5/5/5 This piece is a great filler piece but can be placed into thundermage armies and can be really powerful. A 6 cost king mover is pretty good and this like most has an added upside of having immediately harmful magic at range 3. At + the extra petrifies can be fairly helpful is a decent upgrade. At ++ it gains range 2 attacks at a still fairly affordable price and is one of the best tiers of the piece. At +++ it is the only piece with immediately harmful magic at range 5 and can be portaled out to achieve a quick thundermage victory if your opponent lacks pieces capable of swapping. This is not a recommended strategy as not only is it rather cheap and makes people not want to play with you but it also doesn’t work a lot of times as most people who know what they’re doing have a swapper and all noobs run some tier of paladin or sk. Enchantress Rating:0/1/1/1 Enchantress is bad. Don’t use enchantress because enchant is a terrible status condition. Why? All any half decent player has to do is make threats until enchant runs out and takes your piece. It's so easy to overcome that it’s not worth spending valuable champion slots on this piece of garbage as not only is enchant useless it costs tempo to do nothing and then you’re left with an overpriced king mover. Enchantress wind samurai tactics can be avoided by any half decent player. The only reason I rate enchantress +(+) (+) 1 is because it is at the very least a king mover. Envy Rating: 4/3/2/1 Envy is best at base where copying any champion or even some minions will allow you to come ahead. Also it has pretty good coverage for a 4 cost minion and is by far better than any others but that doesn’t say very much as you should try to avoid being forced to run a champion of 5 or less because you will have less material than your opponent as your cheap champ can’t do anything (exception: greed+ or higher). The problem with envy’s threat squares is that they’re soft and won’t protect the king/expensive piece and they also won’t defend against cheap pieces. Envy should not be run at any tier except base or maybe +. I’m sorry Kevin but envy +++ is garbage. You’d have to find a champion of a greater value than 12 which some armies don’t even run (I have a trade army where necro+++ is the most expensive piece at 14 with the next greatest value piece being Earthelemental++ at 11). Fencer Rating: 1/3/3/5 Fencer is an interesting piece that starts out as absolutely useless at base and gradually becomes more powerful with fencer+++ completely overshadowing all other tiers. Base is useless due to it not only being unable to solomate but can’t threaten anything that's more than a square away. + fixes that weakness. ++ adds more nuanceable armor that I can’t recommend due to most pieces with range 2 attack having unblockable attacks. +++ is a beast it can teleport directly into enemy formations and wreak havoc for only 12 cost. Honestly grand this piece should be 14 at least due to how powerful this is and the fact that it can almost always get a good trade. FireElemental Rating: 2/4/5/5 This piece is incredibly good at stopping dryad but often you will find that your opponent will trade for it if possible and at base and + stopping that is very difficult. This weakness makes the far more mobile ++ and +++ the best tier of this piece. This piece at base is pretty useless as it can’t do the one thing it does best, terrorizing kings and minions. They will always move to your blind spot forcing you to retreat. + can get trapped fairly easily so I would not recommend using due to the large number of points invested in it. So how does one counter this all powerful piece? By using champions that attack like a knight or just have long range like moonfox or bishop. This piece can lose you the game if your opponent gets a tempo advantage as they can force you to move and not feed it and it will just decay and die. FireMage Rating: 3/3/3/3 This piece is not terribly strong. However it's a lot of fun to use and has some enjoyable interactions with samurai due its magic happening before the samurai trigger. This piece’s upgrades are fairly straightforward and are recommended if you don’t want to end up chucking your mouse through the screen trying to get its ability to hit the right spot. However even then upgrades are recommended to actually be able to hit a minion trying to get you out of your ideal location you just spent 2 turns moving to. So yeah that’s firemage moving on because I still have another 80 or so pieces to do. Fireball Rating:-1000/3/3/2 Fireball is an interesting piece. It’s one shot ability doesn’t hurt it as much as you might think, it's mainly more a champion deterrent than an actual threat. At base this piece is absolute garbage as for one more it gains 2.3x the attack squares. While attack squares aren’t as good for this piece as any other, being only able to attack in a straight line for 2 is garbage. This piece is solid at + and ++ and you should choose one of those based on your army. +++ is bad because you don’t want the teleport. As I said earlier fireballs should be the last defender on a piece not an attacker to deter people from trading. If they teleport forward they’re likely going to get killed by minions. Also 5 for a single use unit is a little expensive. Fortress Rating:2/2/2/1 This piece isn’t much better than its cousin, the archbishop. Its blind spots are the most annoying things on the planet and due to its high cost it can’t actually take anything. However unlike the archbishop it can actually solomate at all tiers and at higher tiers it can’t even trade with the king due how expensive this stupid piece is. Don’t use it. If you ever think you want to use it just get a queen and enjoy how great it is compared to this piece of garbage. Wow I need to say 11 more words about this piece of garbage. Oh wait I guess not. Frog Rating 2/1/2/1 This piece is below average. Not being able to attack anything in a corner is infuriating so obviously if you absolutely want to run frog keep it near the center. I guess the chain attacks might have some use in avoiding insta capture after leap but I would not recommend using this piece in any army other than a meme army. Just run literally anything else other than this minion. Its promotion is also pretty bad. At base its toad which is just a weaker king attacker. + just gives you it + some teleports. ++ just gives everything and a few attacks and +++ finally gives you a semi decent overpriced piece. Yay I guess. FrostMage Rating: 1/1/3/5 This piece starts out incredibly weak as freeze is pretty bad in general as it just sets up your opponent for a double threat on one turn and can wear off if your opponent manages to out tempo you. However +++ just has stupidly good coverage. Perspective: You’re trying to kill a frostmage+++ after the patch and you just laugh- frostmage has always been harmless. So you take your warrior and realize wait a second they put a minion in front of it now what do you do. You take your angel and realize the stupid mage can hit you wherever you threaten it from. The only thing that can threaten it is a knight mover but I guarantee that your opponent has put a minion in front of those blind spots and you can’t take the minion without being killed or frozen then thundered. This champ is responsible for some of the cheapest strategies in the game. Its range 2 freeze at +++ is just maddening. FrostMephit Rating:5/3/3/4 This piece is interesting while freeze normally is pretty bad the freeze on death makes it so your opponent can’t take a frostmephit without having another threat ready for next turn which makes it really good as it doesn’t have to be protected as long as another minion is 1 move away. It's also one of the cheapest minions able to move backward and is an excellent counter to ranged magic. Base is the strongest tier due to its spamability and running a full line of them can be a viable strategy. The only other tier worth running in my opinion (well obviously this entire guide is my opinion which I’ll need to spend 10 years defending every stupid thing I said in this doc) is +++ if you have use for the swaps. Swaps are really under appreciated in this game as they can allow for easy double threats and rescue frozen allied pieces. I also believe that base is absolutely terrible design as it is complete rps. This retarded piece counters so many armies so incredibly hard that its very hard to win with the following setups against frostmephits- armies that use expensive minions and a ton of anti-minion get absolutely countered as their minions trade poorly and their champs can’t do anything without being frozen and killed by another stupid mephit, samurai wall, some rushdecks, any army that doesn’t spam equally tradeable minions. If there is any piece that I would want nerfed in the next patch it would be this piece along with all destroy/void and frostmage+++ and medusa. Gemini Rating: 2/4/3/3 This piece is more than first meets the eye and has many different uses. Option 1: Split near the endgame and wait it out with your morale advantage. This strategy is pretty good once you get to that point but it will make the mid/early game harder due to having a material disadvantage as you should keep the gemini away from the fray but it's a won game if you make it to that point. Option 2: split and trade one twin for an opponent's champ. This I feel is the best option you split in the mid game and trade for a champ giving you a material advantage as you just paid for to kill an enemy champ which is a good deal. The only trick is keeping the twin alive for the rest of the game. Option 3: Split and trade both twins. The only problem with this strategy is that it is really hard to get good trades for both twins as your opponent will be reluctant to trade their champs for them as they are worth a little less than 8 in material (slightly worse than crusader). You can use any tier but I would say + is the best tier as it has attacks for the least cost. Ghast Rating 1/2/2/2 I would use any tier but base as upgrading to + gives you double mobility for only one point. This piece can be used after a rush to fill the void and protect minions while they try to promote .Outside of that use I can’t see any reason anyone would use this piece when banshee costs the same amount and has better mobility. But I don’t know maybe someone else has an idea for a use for this piece because I don’t. Even when using it to protect minions while promoting it needs a defender which kinda renders the whole point of the piece worthless. If you want something to popup on death spots just use a tombstone. Ghost Rating 4/2/4/2 This piece has one purpose: allow things to attack or use magic through it. It works best in front of rooks in rushes to allow them to control the file. I would not recommend using + or +++ as the extra mobility on this piece doesn’t help it that much- it's still very slow. I also advise you to use dove instead for bishops unless you, for some reason, need the attacking power t1 and before something gets taken. This piece is a decent defender and a garbage attacker as if you need to attack just use skeleton for 1 less and if you are running a rush this thing is far too slow to attack anyway. GiantSlime Rating:1/2/1/2 Portaling this piece out turn 1 is a terrible strategy. Base can’t hit anything and is in general worthless, a champ that can’t do anything outside of range 1 is pretty bad and you’re definitely not going to reach the enemy line with it unless your opponent is horrible at army building. + is decent but it still struggles to reach the minion line and giantslime is easily put down by anyone who knows what they’re doing- you might get 3 minions if you’re lucky. ++ is bad just because the extra mobility is pretty worthless. +++ is bad because spending 12 to kill a few minions is terrible in most matchups. Also giant slime is worthless against magic so you’re basically stuck with an overpriced champ that's worse than crusader for 1.5x as much congrats. Gluttony Rating 3/2/3/2 Ah yes the champ that a bunch of people thought was going to be broken but is an absolutely worthless attacker. Unless your opponent screws up big time you’re not going to get anything remotely close to the power of the gluttonies grand showed us. But why do you rate it a 3 you might say. Well it’s an incredibly good defender because you’re opponent can’t take the piece its guarding with a piece of similar value because then gluttony gets incredible power and will snowball to win the game. Base and ++ are the best tiers for that reason the extra mobility isn’t very useful and the armor on +++ isn’t going to help anything as it will just disappear the second it takes anything. Gnome Rating 3/2/4/5 This piece is another incredibly powerful defender if your opponent takes the piece its guarding you get an extra champ. Not only that but unlike gluttony it doesn’t have to move to the square to increase its power. After petrifying the enemy it can then let a weaker minion take it. The best tiers for this piece are base and +++. Base is just cheap enough to run a bunch of them so you can force a promotion for a relatively low price. + is bad as the extra movement doesn't help it much. ++ however is decent due to its promotion, EarthElemental, gains range 2 attacks at ++. +++ is incredibly good as that upgrade doubles its coverage allowing 2 gnome+++ to lock down the center of the board forcing your opponent to promote one of them. GravityMage Rating: 0/0/0/3 This piece is garbage until +++. Actually I guess I wouldn’t say garbage but in order to use this piece effectively you need to build your entire setup around so why would you use any tier but +++. I have mixed feelings for this piece. On one hand it's a very cool piece but games involving armies based around (see betel’s cancer army) are no fun to play against despite not being incredibly op. In this kind of army I would recommend running a dryad because you will work up a sizable morale debt through killing minions with thunder mage after being frozen and dragged into the center with gravy. Greed Rating: 1/2/4/5 This piece is inordinately useless at base and + due to only getting 2 extra points with a worthless piece. ++ and +++ are great endgame pieces and can easily win you the game. The trick with greed however is not to be stupid. Don’t run more than 1 greed. It's a horrible idea as if you trade a single greed during a game you’ve basically lost. If you run more than one it makes it impossible to not trade it. Greed must be well protected. I would recommend putting it far from your king to avoid forks that could force you to trade it. Guardian Rating 2/2/2/3 I would avoid using guardian at any tier except +++ for extremely high value pieces that can immediately recapture any piece that attacks the guardian. There are a bunch of strategies that use a bunch of +++ to defend a queen++ or an soulkeeper++. These strategies fall pretty hard to magic so I wouldn’t recommend them but yeah it’s a fairly niche piece and rather weak outside of specific armies. Using any tier lower than +++ is a little iffy because these tiers need to be in front of a piece to protect it which removes a lot of its purpose and use. Harpy Rating: 3/3/3/3 I have no strong feelings about this piece; its blind spot is so freaking annoying but the teleports are pretty nice. But not being able to kill something directly in front of you is incredibly obnoxious. I feel it's a little too expensive for a short rook but the diagonal attacks are semi useful but the blind spot is just aggravating but it makes up for it in mobility. It can be used for a spearman rush deck to push the spearmen but otherwise the wind is less than useless. All tiers are fine depending on what you use it for. HauntedArmor Rating: 3/4/4/3 This piece especially at higher tiers is excellent at solomating. This piece's armor allows it to get good trades as long as it can get close to an enemy champion. Base is a little lackluster due to its slow movement and is not recommended if you want to be able to use it anytime before very late game. However this can be remedied through setups using wind or nexus but these setups get heavily nuanced and are not very strong. + is probably the best tier of haunted armor as it's cheap enough to be able to trade with most champs while still having decent mobility. ++ is good for king hunting and in my opinion +++ is not necessary and is too expensive to be useful. Hoplite Rating 1/5/4/6 This piece is really good and a hoplite rush will crush any player without enough nuance pieces. Base is really bad as it can’t stack and do the signature 2 by 3 hoplite block without other hoplites. + is good as it's really cheap and a block of + hoplites is still very formidable. ++ is bad due to paying an extra 2 points for highly nuanced armor. +++ is incredibly dangerous and is best used to support other tiers of hoplites and a full block of +++ is bad because its just so impractically expensive (both in coins and points) and will force you to use multiple greeds or lose a few rooks. If you are running hoplites you need to trade with nuance pieces as soon as possible (such as, lilith, behemoth, dryad, FireElemental, ranger, ect.) to ensure the rush succeeds. Hostage Rating 3/2/1/1 I really hate this piece. It's really bad. It can’t protect your pieces as if a move is advantageous enough to your opponent they will make that move. A 5 material gain for 8 morale is always a great choice. If your opponent leads in material they **will** win as long as they don’t blunder. Therefore the only use of this piece is to block attacks from long range. This piece gets progressively worse because you’re spending points on a piece that can’t attack and the additional morale loss doesn’t mean anything. Also it gives your opponent morale if you blunder it. Don’t use any tier but base. Hydromancer Rating: 2/4/4/4 This piece is very underrated. While base is terrible at 6 cost (you could get a knight for that) and has exactly 4 attack squares. + is the first good tier as it has twice the number of attack squares than base and can trade very well. I’ve won a game due to forking my opponents greed+++ and king despite being down by 17 points. ++ is also good because it makes it much easier to maneuver so this is an important upgrade for people who don’t want to have to deal with its obnoxious movement. +++